Guide Camp Sewing

Our girls started Guides this year and have loved every minute of it. I'm glad, because I have great memories of being a Guide when I was a kid too, and I know they are learning so much being there with other people. It also has the perks of being two hours on a Friday night. I'll be honest, Steve and I haven't really taken full advantage of that yet, but every now and then, we do enjoy the quiet dinner together. 

So one thing Guides do, if you don't know, is go on camps. Pretty frequently actually. The girls had one in August that was just at a local guide hut for two nights. I was so excited for them, because again, I can remember so much fun on guide camps. Hooray! 

What I didn't remember was all the packing. Our Guide group is lovely, but they aren't the most organised, I'll have to admit. So we got the packing list a week before the girls were to go away. All well and good if you have been on a camp before, and it's not like the list contained too many out of the box things. Wet pack, spare clothes, sleeping bag were all there. But extra things like a plate bag, to put all their cutlery/crockery in, and a tarp, that had to be two by three metres. And a "Sit-upon" which is a square mat (preferably water proof) they can use if they need to sit on the grass for a long period of time. 

Reading the list, I felt a bit silly for not remembering some of those things, but also frustrated. We did have a tarp, for example, but it wasn't quite big enough, and I didn't have two of them. Most people would have a spare drawstring bag lying around for a plate bag, but two that are roughly the same to avoid arguments? Sigh. Even one extra weeks notice would have been greatly appreciated. 

In any case, I got my thinking hat on and then got sewing. Plate bags first, since drawstring bags are easy and I was sure to have some fabric I could use up in the scraps box. Serendipitously, I found that I had exactly the right amount of material for two plate bags from two rectangles of  fabric that the girls themselves had tie-dyed after Christmas. The tie dye powders were a Christmas present from my Godmother, and I had just given them any white fabric that I had on hand to be creative with. 

Perfect for their plate bags: hooray! Rachel sewed hers on her little sewing machine while I did most of Sophie's on Sally. She had to patch her piece of tie dyed fabric first since she'd cut a random circle from one corner for something else. (See my peacock fabric below?) Sophie did come over and do a bit, but was mostly not interested. I happened to have exactly the right amount of cord and two wooden beads in my stash as well. So perfect. 

While I was looking through the stash box for plate bag fabric, I stumbled across the strip of leftover vinyl that we had from recovering the chairs. I had to patch it together to get the squares, but they are pretty sturdy. 

For the flip side, I used a quilted Lorraine Lea pillow case that my friend Katie gave me. (I've used pillowcases before see?) I figured that the quilted bit would make the mats slightly more padded and thus comfortable on the ground. Rachel learnt how to bind things when we finished all the edges with strips of the other side of the pillow case.  

Done and done. Though it was rushed, I did feel good sending them off with home made things in their bags. Also happy to report that the girls both had a fantastic time camping and can't wait to go again.